Sex ‘n drugs ‘n minerals management

The headlines about the sex-n-drugs scandal at the Minerals Management Service are predictably focusing on the cocaine, the pot, the sexual indiscretions. And a lot of the tops of the stories focus on the football games, paintball outings and the like proferred to the government’s oil buyers and sellers by Big Oil. It was, says Interior Inpector Earl E. Devaney, who issued the report, “A culture of ethical failure.”

And you have to hand it to Devaney for stating the obvious:

Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length.

And amid all the wink-wink-nudge-nudge, don’t fail to notice that the hanky-panky after hours was just window dressing on what was going on right in the MMS offices in Denver. Self-dealing that seems likely to, uh, rob taxpayers was rampant. One bureaucrat has already pleaded guilty, but federal prosecutors declined to go after two higher-ranking officials.

Earl Devaney

This unit was set up a few years ago to simplify life for the oil companies. Its employees would take delivery of oil in payment of oil companies’ royatly payments for drilling on federal offshore reserves. Apparently the MMS employees thought they were above federal ethics rules because they were moving in the world of oil-industry wheeler-dealers, and supervisors remained “calculatedly ignorant” of rules forbidding awarding of government contracts to recently retired friends from within the agency, Devaney reported.

Through all this, the D.C. overseers of MMS were “blind to easily discernable misconduct,” Devaney reported.

Devaney’s office’s work churned up more than 470,000 pages of investigative documents. The reports in question are here, here, and here. But if you can’t find time to read all that, I do recommend his four-page letter transmitting the findings to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, which notes that some officials:

… escaped potential administrative action by departing from federal service, with the usual celebratory send-offs that allegedly highlighted the impeccable service these individuals had given to the Federal Government. Our reports belie this notion.

Meanwhile, the overnight version of the AP story says the scandal could blow up Congressional efforts to expand off-shore drilling for oil and natural gas.

OK, back to the wink-and-nudge before we sign off. A friend nominates Scientific American’s hed on this post as potentially the snarkiest:

Scandal: Surplus energy? Inspector general faults improper ‘drilling’

Update 2:49 p.m.: Wow. This one’s a big enough stinker that even U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Big Oil, is saying they done bad. The ranking Republican (actually from Alaska — but you knew that!) opines in a press release just over the transom:

The findings outlined in the Inspector General report are troubling and reveal unacceptable and illegal conduct by certain career federal employees in the Minerals Management Service. Fortunately, the Department of the Interior has been taking corrective action while the Inspector General was conducting his two-year, multi-million dollar investigation.

Nothing to see here, folks; move it along…

Young also complained that Democrats in charge of Congress have failed to hold hearings on a number of important issues, such as the need for more oil drilling offshore and in the Alaksan outback. Yet, he notes, they’ve hastily thrown together a hearing on this pot ‘n coke ‘n booze ‘n fornication business:

America’s energy crisis wasn’t even important enough to hold one hearing on, yet in a matter of hours, the Democratic Leadership can put together a Congressional hearing involving sex and drugs. Congress is voting the Democratic Leadership’s so-called energy bill next week but there won’t be one hearing held on it to discuss what’s in this secret bill and what’s being left out.